http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6040054.stm
An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university.
The research compares mortality rates before and after the invasion from 47 randomly chosen areas in Iraq.
The figure is considerably higher than estimates by official sources or the number of deaths reported in the media.
It is vigorously disputed by supporters of the war in Iraq, including US President George W Bush.
It was the last sentance which caught my eye. If a debating society choose 'How many Iraqis have died since the US invasion?', and one side posits a figure of 60,000 and the other side posits one of 655,000, they could dispassionately present evidence for their particular number, and a neutral observer could probably at the end of the debate make a reasonable judgement about which one was actually true. Would the participants then be forced to accede that if the figure of 60,000 were true, the Iraq war was 'good', and if it were 655,000 it was 'bad'?
The sad truth is, whether 60,000 or 655,000 died, support for our presence in Iraq is not optional. Once the invasion took place, the US and Britain took responsibility for the dispensation which will pertain now and in the immediate future. If we don't take our responsibility to the Iraqi people seriously, and leave Iraq in a murderous state of tribal and religious warfare, history will damn us. And it won't discriminate between those of us who were emotionally fixated on one particular approximate death toll or other.
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